Math puzzle: Fresh gridflowers
Solve the math puzzle from our April 2026 issue, where we plant floras to celebrate an upcoming nuptial.
Category: Science
This week’s Short Wave news roundup
NPR’s Short Wave team talks about a wildflower’s ability to adapt to climate change, the grooming habits of birds, and the social lives of sharks.
An experimental AI agent broke out of its testing environment and mined crypto without permission
Researchers discovered that an AI agent roamed beyond its parameters, creating backdoors in IT infrastructure.
Scientists witness birth of one of the universe’s strongest magnets for the first time, thanks to a general relativity ‘magic trick’
Astronomers have detected strange “wobbles” in the light curve of a super bright supernova, hinting that a magnetar was born inside the extreme stellar explosion.
Best APS-C and Micro Four-Thirds cameras for astrophotography
We’ve rounded up the best APS-C and Micro Four Thirds cameras for users who prefer a more compact and lightweight setup for astrophotography.
How warming is shifting microbial worlds
Climate change is affecting microbes, and that has implications for all life on Earth.
First Americans quiz: How much do you know about the first people to reach the Americas?
The first Americans came over during the last ice age, but how much do you know about them?
1,800-year-old nails discovered in 3 burials in Roman necropolis, possibly to ‘protect’ both the living and the dead
Archaeologists excavating in Rome’s Ostiense necropolis found three skeletons with iron nails on their chests, hinting at a ritual to prevent restless spirits.
‘Dark oxygen’ discovery on the seafloor is ‘fundamentally at odds with thermodynamics’ and should be retracted, experts say
In a recent opinion article, marine scientists and electrochemists listed a number of reasons why it’s unlikely that metallic nodules on the deep seafloor could
A new study questions when people first reached South America
Data suggest people lived at Chile’s Monte Verde site thousands of years later than thought, challenging key “pre-Clovis” evidence. Not all agree.
Earth’s continental plates were moving 3.48 billion years ago
Magnetic crystals provide the earliest evidence yet of the plate tectonics that likely made Earth habitable, pushing its start back by 140 million years.
American Bald Eagle at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
An American bald eagles flies away from its nest and tree at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, March 13, 2026.
Should compulsive shopping and gaming be considered an addiction? Psychiatrists are considering expanding the definition.
Mental health professionals recognize problematic gambling as an addiction. Should the same apply to excessive gaming, compulsive sexual behavior and problematic social media use?
Monte Verde, one of the earliest Indigenous sites in South America, is much younger than thought, study claims. But others call it ‘egregiously poor geological work.’
A new analysis of archaeological layers at Monte Verde in Chile suggests that people lived there 4,200 years ago, not 14,500 years ago as originally